


How Magic Works

by ChocoholicFangirl



Series: Haikyuu!! Magic Fest 2016 [2]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-29
Updated: 2016-09-29
Packaged: 2018-08-18 12:00:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8161391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChocoholicFangirl/pseuds/ChocoholicFangirl
Summary: For Haikyuu!! Magic Fest

  It only takes a couple of days with Yamaguchi in his apartment for Chikara to break his no-magic vow.


  It’s not even because of the fires Yamaguchi keeps setting everywhere. After all, Chikara himself has done it from time to time. When he had first moved in, Chikara had actually tried to smoke. He discovered, fairly quickly, that he wasn’t cut out for angsty brooding, but hey, at least he has practice with the fire extinguisher.


  “It’s fine,” Chikara says, batting out the last flickering flames on the stove. “This is fine.”





	

**Author's Note:**

> This has been a really cool event! My Magic Fest random trope prompts were: Hellfire, Power Overhaul, Psychoactive Powers, and Genie in a Bottle. I attempted to kind of incorporate all of them, and was only slightly successful…?
> 
> There's a Major Character Death warning, but it happened in the past and it's not very graphic, I think. I hope you enjoy!

( _You have 14 new voicemails_ , his phone says. The light is blinding.)

(Chikara deletes them all without listening.)

 

* * *

 

 

 

The title is misleading, Chikara thinks, because at this point in his life, Chikara has sworn off touching anything magical ever again. He will not watch magic performances, he will not read books about magic, he will not even buy basic charms for warding off mosquitoes or use tiny spells to unblock his drains.

It’s the magic, he thinks, that won’t leave him alone.

After three months in this apartment, he’s finally figured out how to open the windows (they were rusted shut, okay, it wasn’t easy), so now instead of sleeping he just spends all night leaning on the windowsill, looking out at the neon lights of the city, listening to the cars and the people and everything and nothing. Tokyo, he decides, is a good city for him. There is no silence that his brain will then presumptuously fill in for him. Also, there are enough non-magicians that he can count on his silent but not unkind neighbor to teach him how to use a plunger and wash his sink without eyeing him with confusion. Around here, it’s normal to call the building super when he locks himself out of his room instead of just magicking through the lock. It’s a city, Chikara repeats to himself with emphasis, where people live _normally_.

(He might have cheated, once, last week, when he stabbed himself in the hand with a screwdriver and Akaashi wasn’t home, but he’s since acquired a first-aid kit. He’s learning. He’ll get used to this.)

He wasn’t really _planning_ on climbing out that window, that particular night, but when the acrid scent of smoke reaches his nose, he sighs in resignation and sets down his coffee.

 

 

 

He finds the kid at that same spot behind the dumpster, beating out the flames rather unsuccessfully with his jacket. There is a moment of silence as they look at each other and the kid’s eyes immediately fly to the chalk patterns underneath the burning pages. Chikara pours a glass of water over the flames. The kid, self-consciously, crumples up his singed jacket.

“It’s you again,” Chikara says, trying to be stern and disapproving but really just sounding tired. “Should you be out this late?”

The kid was taller than Chikara, bony and lanky and obviously young, probably in high school. Or supposed to be in high school. His face was covered in soot, his hair tied back in a ponytail. “I’m not a kid,” the kid snaps, then sneezes violently. “I can do what I want.”

Chikara looks up at the night sky. “It’s three in the morning,” he points out. When the kid bows his head and doesn’t argue, Chikara continues: “Where do you live, anyway? You’re not from around here.” It is possibly laughable that Chikara, who has only recently found an actual place to live, is leveling this accusation at someone else, but he sees the pale skin under the soot streaked with what is most definitely blood and it’s all thunderingly familiar. It’s three in the morning and Chikara has just now realized that he doesn’t know how he’s getting back into his apartment.

(The climbing-out-the-window thing is too ingrained in him; maybe it would be better if he locks the window back up.)

The kid wipes at his face, only smearing the soot even more. He still doesn’t answer.

Chikara lets out a soft _hmm_. “That’s what I thought.” He half-turns, gestures for the kid to follow him. “Come on. And leave your book, that stuff’s not good for you.”

 

 

 

When Chikara wakes up the next morning—scrubbing his dreams out of his eyes, the plumes of darkness, Nishinoya’s pained cry  _Chikara help me_ —he half expects the kid to have made off with all of Chikara’s valuables (ha, valuables, good luck finding any). But the kid ( _be nice_ , Chikara thinks, _he gave you his possibly fake name, you wouldn’t want people to call you_ the asshole _when narrating_ ), who said last night after Chikara’s abortive attempt at interrogating him to call him Yamaguchi, is still sleeping soundly on the couch, curled up like a shrimp with his knees to his chest.

He looks a lot younger without the soot and the blood and the mystery substance that Chikara isn’t sure he’ll be able to wash out of his towels, his cheeks dusted with freckles, his lips pouting as though he was arguing with someone in his sleep. Yamaguchi’s stuff is in a little pile: the backpack he had pulled out from under the dumpster, the half-black jacket, the book that Chikara had told him to leave behind (still wet).

There is a knock at the door which, Chikara now remembers, is still broken.

“Everything all right?” Akaashi asks, carefully shifting the door out of the doorframe and looking around Chikara’s living room. His eyes avoid Yamaguchi. “Did something happen?”

“I’m fine,” Chikara says. He can’t remember how many times he’s said that over the past months. “Everything’s fine.”

Akaashi looks at him. “I’ll help you fix the door,” he finally says.

 

 

 

* * *

 

( _You know it’s not anyone’s fault_ , the text said. Chikara made the mistake of reading it before deleting the notification. _Stop insisting it’s yours_.)

( _Chikara_ , it said. _Please come back_.)

 

* * *

 

 

 

It only takes a couple of days with Yamaguchi in his apartment for Chikara to break his no-magic vow.

It’s not even because of the fires Yamaguchi keeps setting everywhere. After all, Chikara himself has done it from time to time. When he had first moved in, Chikara had actually tried to smoke. He discovered, fairly quickly, that he wasn’t cut out for angsty brooding, but hey, at least he has practice with the fire extinguisher.

“It’s fine,” Chikara says, batting out the last flickering flames on the stove. “This is fine.”

And then Chikara comes home from grocery shopping to find Yamaguchi kneeling in front of a complex chalk diagram, gazing into the woven strings of green fire. For a second, Chikara swears, the glowing shape looked at him.

There are nonmagical solutions, but Chikara panics—he pushes, blind and clumsy after weeks of disuse, and flattens the gathering magic until it bursts. The shattered pieces of the spell sprays everywhere and apparently knocks out the electricity for their whole block.

“How did you do that?” Yamaguchi asks, later, as Chikara wrapped up the cut on his palm. “That—the whole—”

“Next time, you’re coming shopping with me,” Chikara says, tucking in the edge of the bandage. There are a million things on the tip of his tongue, but what comes out is: “I hope you like potatoes.”

Yamaguchi jumps at the lifeline; it turns out he does like potatoes, and has to show Chikara how to peel them.

“I used to cook a lot,” Yamaguchi confesses, while Chikara tries to recover from the embarrassment. “Nonmagically, I mean. At home. My family’s not—they’re not big on magic.”

“Huh,” Chikara replies, because that stunt just now, with the green fire—that does not seem like amateur magic.

“See, you just add a little—not too much! Okay, that’s too much.”

 

 

 

“How old are you anyway?” Chikara asks. They went to the supermarket, for spices that Yamaguchi suggested, and then they window-shopped for a while on the street, and now they’re sitting in a booth in a small ramen place, and it all feels so completely mundane, two ordinary people doing ordinary things. “Twelve, thirteen? Am I likely to be arrested for kidnapping?”

Yamaguchi pauses in blowing on his noodles, eyebrows snapping together in indignation. “I’m sixteen!”

“Mmm.” Chikara swallows a bite. “Is it really okay for you to miss school like this?” When Yamaguchi gives him a look, he continues, “School is important, you know, it may not seem like that now but—”

“I know what I’m doing,” Yamaguchi insists.

This should probably have been a red flag—what teenager really actually knows what they’re doing?—but Chikara can tell that further interrogation might shut Yamaguchi up, and he doesn’t want to ruin this afternoon, ruin this—whatever this is. “Okay,” he says, mild, leaning back. “Okay. Can you pass me the salt?”

Yamaguchi does. “Tsukki always adds salt when we’re eating ramen. He’s so tall that he has to bend down to eat it, but then his glasses fog up.”

Chikara blinks. “Who’s—”

“Oh, my friend. Tsukki.” Yamaguchi smiles fondly.

Friend. It’s so easy to take for granted, until you realize you haven’t said it in months. “My friend—uh—Tanaka,” he pauses to steady his nerves, starts again: “Tanaka, he always tried—tries to eat it too quickly and burns himself.”

Yamaguchi laughs. He has the kind of laugh that scrunches up his nose and turns his eyes into slits, and it feels like seeing double. It’s been years since Tanaka has haunted Chikara’s every waking moment, and Chikara doesn’t really flinch at remembering him anymore, even lets himself think about the way he would loop an arm around his shoulders and smile at him. He closes his eyes and smiles back. Tanaka’s laughter echoes around him.

 

 

 

Chikara doesn’t have a television—it’s not really like he has a lot of money lying around—so he watches movies and shows on his laptop. Yamaguchi joins him, because Chikara takes the only couch and there isn’t anywhere else for Yamaguchi to sit.

“I just really admire the director’s focus on minor details,” Chikara says, pausing the film— _Adrift in Tokyo_ —for the fifth time. “See, right there—”

“Ennoshita-san,” Yamaguchi protests, half amused, half exasperated. “I’ve never seen this movie before, could I maybe just watch it?”

Chikara blinks at him, because the last time he watched a movie with his friends, Narita said the exact same thing, in the same tone. He always jokingly complains about Chikara’s film obsessions but then notices the things Chikara mentions. He will never be able to watch movies again, with or without Chikara. What a morbid thing to say, Chikara thinks to himself, as though commenting on it negates how stupid it sounds; it’s not like movies are a priority for Narita.

“Right.” His voice feels a little distant. “Right, okay.”

Yamaguchi seems startled. “I’m kidding,” he says hurriedly. “You can—I don’t mind, I really don’t. Tsukki does it all the time. When we watched _Jurassic World_ , the day it came out, he kept leaning over to whisper random dinosaur facts to me. It’s—”

“No, no, you’re right.” Chikara unpauses the movie. “I have plenty of time to wax poetic about it later.”

He doesn’t wax poetic about it later, because about halfway through the film he falls asleep. He wakes up, in the middle of the night, with his arm numb under him, his neck bent at an awkward angle, and tear tracks on his face. _What a mess_ , he thinks.  _I hope I didn't drool_.

 

 

 

* * *

 

(They're all smiling in the Facebook picture. All five of them, leaning on each other, the way things used to be.)

( _I’m sorry_ , Chikara thinks, over and over.)

 

* * *

 

 

 

“What are you doing?” Akaashi asks.

“Uh,” Chikara replies eloquently, holding the trash bag. “Me…?”

“With the kid,” Akaashi clarifies. “What is he doing here?”

Chikara tries, he really does, but the thing about Akaashi is that he has a very compelling silence. His face does all the talking, really, and it takes Chikara maybe two seconds to crack.

“I caught him stealing salt at the supermarket a few weeks ago,” he confesses.

Akaashi waits.

“I saw him a couple times after that, too.” The words pour out of Chikara. He can’t go to Daichi for advice about this, because Daichi knows what happened and he’ll try to Father Figure his way through the issue and it wouldn’t be any use if Yamaguchi just runs. “He was sleeping on a park bench at some point. I managed to catch him a couple times and ask him what he’s doing by himself, but he’s pretty quick.”

“And you want to help him?” There's something disapproving in Akaashi's blank expression.

“I—” Chikara doesn’t know what to say, because he doesn’t feel like he’s at the point in his life where he can help anyone. “I think—uh. I think I know why he’s here. And—” _I think there needs to be an adult involved, in this situation. I wish there was an adult involved in my situation._ “I can’t just sit here,” he says, clumsily, because it boils down to this: there are only so many reasons a kid would be stealing salt, of all things; there are no good endings in this story.

“Ennoshita-san?” Yamaguchi calls, and he sounds so young. Chikara was sixteen, too, when he nearly killed everyone. “Ennoshita-san, do you like yakisoba?”

 

 

 

“Have you found a job yet?” Kinoshita asks. He has that nonchalant tone, light and airy, that means he’s trying to be casual.

Chikara looks over at where Yamaguchi’s stretched out on the couch. He thinks of Akaashi’s parting remarks— _I’m not saying you need to take full responsibility for him, but teenagers are still growing and he needs proteins_ —and realizes that Daichi’s possibly not the only Father Figure he has to worry about. “No,” he says. “I haven’t heard back from anyone.”

“Are you even trying?” Kinoshita jokes.

“Of course I am!” Chikara retorts, like he’s supposed to, and Kinoshita laughs, like he’s supposed to, and this is why Kinoshita is the only one Chikara can stand to talk to, why Kinoshita is the one Chikara calls for news. He plays along with Chikara’s ridiculous charade, makes small talk and gossips about their old classmates and ignores the massive elephant in the room. “I worked really hard on my applications, okay, they just don’t need yet another young man without even a college education—”

“Okay, okay,” Kinoshita relents. “That’s good, then.”

For a moment Chikara is speechless. “Good?” He’s living off of microwaveable meals and what Yamaguchi can put together out of whatever’s on sale at the market, and he is four months behind on rent, and the only reason he’s here at all is because Daichi is the building super and seems to see him as his personal responsibility. “How is it good that—”

“They miss you,” Kinoshita says, without warning, and Chikara feels distinctly betrayed. “ _I_ miss you. Look, I know things are weird—”

“I gotta go,” Chikara tries, but he doesn’t get a chance.

“Haven’t you run away for long enough?” Kinoshita snaps, and there’s the Kinoshita Chikara knows, never afraid to assert himself even when the world is determined to forget about him. “Kazu cries all the time when he thinks I’m not there and there’s nothing I can say to him because, you might recall, Chikara, I don’t actually know what happened! And Yuu—”

Chikara hangs up.

 

 

 

“Is this why you’re letting me stay here?” Yamaguchi asks, pulling the pan out of the oven. “Because I can cook?”

“And bake, apparently,” Chikara adds, looking at the perfectly-shaped cake.

“And that,” Yamaguchi agrees. “Tsukki and me, we bake together, too.”

Chikara has noticed that this Tsukki person is never very far from Yamaguchi’s mind. “Yeah? Is he good?”

Yamaguchi snorts. “God, no. I swear he pours in extra sugar when I’m not looking, and it turns out completely terrible. There’d be clumps of burnt sugar in the cake.”

He grabs the whipped cream. “We would spend all day Sunday just ignoring our homework and messing around. And then he would say ‘Let’s bake something,’ and then I would say ‘Okay’ because Tsukki’s kind of hard to say no to, when he wants something? And then we completely destroy his kitchen, and then his mom would yell at us and we would hide in his room. I miss that, just seeing him smile. I just want to—” Yamaguchi takes a deep breath. “Everything’s going to be fine again,” he says, with determination, “when he’s back.”

It’s like someone’s found a dusty closet in the back of Chikara’s mind and flipped on the light switch— _oh, there it is_. Chikara doesn’t know how he hasn’t realized this whole time. Or maybe he has known, but he’s not Daichi, who can see when to step in and when to leave well enough alone, or Akaashi, who has zero tolerance for bullshit; he’s not even Tanaka, who seems to always know the right thing to say, and for God’s sake what is he even thinking? Isn’t Chikara here precisely because Tanaka isn’t anywhere anymore?

Isn’t it about time he stopped blaming his shitty story on Tanaka?

 

 

 

* * *

 

(Chikara deactivates his social media accounts. He writes his first spell in a long, long time, casting a web to protect himself from magic trackers.)

(After a moment of hesitation, he blocks all their numbers, too.)

 

* * *

 

 

 

Chikara stares at the ceiling.

He is so tired that he can’t feel his face anymore, but he refuses to sleep. Some part of him knows that it’s only because he doesn’t want to dream, but he rationalizes it away. He needs to talk to Yamaguchi, he needs to be the adult in the situation and talk about Experience and Making Mistakes and How Magic Works, he needs to stop this because maybe this wasn’t even his story to begin with, maybe he’s here to be the Dispenser of Wisdom in Yamaguchi’s life and he needs to do his goddamn job.

_Please don’t let me fall asleep_ , Chikara thinks. _Please don’t let me dream_.

His mind, disobedient, wanders away from the subject at hand to Tanaka. Tanaka, who had said _Of course I can keep the explosion under control! Who do you think I am?_ He’s Tanaka Ryuunosuke, and there’s nothing he can’t do, and then there’s the brilliant green fire and the ambulance and the hospital and the funeral, and for years Chikara would see Tanaka’s lifeless eyes everywhere he looked. Why did he believe him? Why did he think making these videos would be a good idea?

He sees behind his eyelids Kinoshita’s desperate expression, sees Kinoshita kneeling in front of him and saying _I’m so sorry_ , over and over again and thinks _no, Hisashi, I’m the one who should be sorry_.

_I know he’s important but I don’t know why_ , Kinoshita says. _Please, please tell me. I don’t know what to do, Chikara. What do I do?_

_I wish I could take your place_ , Chikara says to Dream Kinoshita now. _Or Kazuhito’s place. Or Yuu’s place. I wish I was the one who died to begin with_.

He remembers the way his insides froze when he hears Narita’s startled cry, _What’s happening_ , _Chikara I can’t see_. He remembers the way Nishinoya fell into Chikara’s arms and Chikara thought _no, no, not him too_. He remembers, especially, waiting for his punishment to come and hating himself when it never did. They deserved so much better and he failed them in every way, because he was so stupid. Because he listened to Tanaka.

 

 

 

“I kind of explicitly asked to not dream about this,” Chikara says.

The spirit they had released—they bought a spirit in a bottle off the internet, Chikara still can’t believe it—shrugs. “This isn’t within my control.”

The chalk diagram, their spells, the terms of the contract, it was all perfect. Chikara was so thorough, so careful. And it worked, and they paid for it, and Chikara’s left screaming, cradling Nishinoya in his arms. Narita is flailing, and Kinoshita’s eyes are wide in confusion and horror, and Tanaka’s body falls to pieces in front of them, about two paces out of his grave.

“No,” Chikara gasps. Tanaka’s head just kind of detaches itself from the spine and rolls for a bit. “No—Ryuu—no, this can’t be it—”

“I executed your orders,” the spirit says.

Chikara lets out something between a whimper and a laugh. “He’s still dead,” he points out, like he’s politely trying to get a refund at the supermarket or something. _Hi, excuse me, but this isn’t the resurrection I ordered_.

“It’s the best I can do,” the spirit replies, apologetic. “And if you don’t mind me saying so, this is probably the best anyone can do.”

“The best.” Chikara repeats to himself. Kinoshita wraps his arms around Narita, whispering urgently to calm him down. “The best you can do.”

“What’s done by magic cannot be undone. One might reverse the side effects, a little, but ultimately the consequences cannot be negotiated once the deal is struck.” The spirit’s tone was stern but not unkind. “Believe it or not, you’re not the first to have tried this. Not even the hundredth. It has never worked.”

It’s over, isn’t it? It’s all over, and all Chikara has done is hurt them more.

 

 

 

Chikara lunges out of bed when he hears the scream, even before his eyes actually open. When he bursts out of his bedroom, for a moment all he could see is flashing green light.

“Yamaguchi!” he shouts.

“I’m sorry!” Yamaguchi wails, and Chikara uses his voice to pinpoint his silhouette amidst the chaos. For a moment he just stands there, staring at the towering shape of the fire reaching towards Yamaguchi. Then he puts himself between the demon and Yamaguchi without thinking, without a plan or an idea or even a _What the_ fuck _is that_ , and Chikara wonders if he doesn’t have some dad material in him after all.

He holds up one hand, pushes with everything he has, finds the lines of the spell and breaks them with sheer force. He realizes, with sudden clarity and _wow_ a lot of guilt, that he hasn’t stopped Yamaguchi outright all this time because part of him was wondering if maybe, just maybe, it would work after all, that there might still be a chance, that it’s not as impossible as the spirit had claimed.

He can’t think like this anymore. He can’t keep trying to fix the wrong things.

After enough threads break, the whole thing unravels, still shrieking Yamaguchi’s name (so Yamaguchi was his real name, Chikara realizes with some surprise). Chikara holds up a barrier until the wind and fire has died down. The couch has been burnt to ash; the walls are charred. Even Daichi won’t be able to help Chikara with this.

Chikara turns and looks at Yamaguchi, whose face is white. “This,” he says, feeling very dramatic, but then coughs and has to start over. “This ends now.”

 

 

 

* * *

 

( _It’s fine_ , Chikara calls through the door, when Daichi comes knocking. _Everything’s fine_.)

 

* * *

 

 

 

“How did he die?” Chikara asks. “Your friend? Tsukki?”

Yamaguchi flinches. “We were—we found some of his brother’s old notebooks, and we were just messing around. I don't know what happened. I'm still trying to figure it out. I—” He runs a hand over a sizeable hole on the floor, magic trailing from his fingers. “I woke up and he’s gone. I can't—I can't give up now, I need to know what happened. I have to fix this.”

Chikara shakes his head, but Yamaguchi persists. “You have really powerful magic, Ennoshita-san; it’ll work if you help me, I know it will—”

“Listen.” Chikara clears his throat. There are probably better times and places for this conversation—not while patching up the walls after Yamaguchi’s disastrous spell, for instance. But Chikara can’t put it off. “Listen. You remember Tanaka? I've talked about him.” Yamaguchi nods, jerky and impatient. “He died when I was—when we were sixteen. We were stupid, we thought we had a hold on our magic, and he died. It happens all the time. Teenagers—teenagers do a lot of dumb things.”

Yamaguchi avoids his eyes.

“We didn’t learn. Well, I didn’t. I researched and experimented and put together something I thought would bring him back. The logic was solid, and it worked as much as it was able to, and—” Chikara sighs. “Look, nothing brings dead people back. Our magic reanimated his body for all of two minutes, and because of that my friends—one lost his ability to walk, one lost his eyesight, and one lost years of his memory, lost everything he had of Tanaka and our time as friends. I asked them to help me and this is what I have to live with.”

“Yamaguchi,” Chikara says, channeling Tanaka’s strength. “Look at me. Sometimes we make mistakes, sometimes shitty things happen. Sometimes we lose people that we care about. Magic—magic is powerful stuff, and sometimes we don’t respect it enough and we pay for it. Your friend is dead; you can’t run away from that.” He leans forward, almost considers resting his hand on Yamaguchi’s shoulder, but paternal gestures like that probably cross a line somewhere and he won’t ever be able to come back.

“There are things that magic can’t fix, Yamaguchi. I learned this the hard way. You have to trust me.”

Yamaguchi’s resolute expression crumples, and he buries his face in his knees. He cries, and Chikara rubs his back, because there's really nothing else to say.

 

 

 

Afterwards, they sit in the empty living room, in front of Chikara’s laptop. There’s some sort of rom-com playing. They watch the hero gaze longingly after the heroine, watch the heroine trip and sputter and blush and think _why couldn’t that have been my story, why couldn’t our youth and clumsiness only lead to some angsty love triangle or unrequited crush?_

Or maybe that’s just Chikara. It’s the director in him, he can’t help it.

“What am I supposed to do now?” Yamaguchi asks. “I just wanted him back. I don’t know what to do without him.”

Honestly? Chikara has no idea what to say. “I guess we just get up and keep going,” he says, and here, he knows, is shaky territory. Here, he’s just a hypocrite. “We just hold onto whoever’s left.”

Yamaguchi looks at him, with a dull, blank expression that says _I still wish it was me instead_ , and Chikara nods, because he doesn’t know if he’ll ever stop wishing that, either.

“Are you hungry?” Chikara asks.

Yamaguchi shakes his head. The rom-com heroine falls on her face.

 

 

 

Yamaguchi calls his parents, under Chikara’s steely supervision. They yell at him, they cry over the fact that he’s alive, they thank Chikara profusely when he takes the phone to tell them that he’s bought Yamaguchi a train ticket back to Miyagi.

Yamaguchi stands by the turnstiles, shuffling his feet. Chikara’s about to say “Don’t get into any more trouble” or something equally dadlike, probably to his mortification, when Yamaguchi abruptly hugs him, to his even worse mortification.

“Thanks,” Yamaguchi says, haltingly; then the last boarding announcement came over the PA and Yamaguchi rushes through the crowd and Chikara had time for one last thought ( _should have bought him a better backpack, that thing’s about to fall apart, what would his parents say_ ) before Yamaguchi’s gone.

_What am I going to do now?_ Chikara wonders absently.

(It seems kind of obvious, doesn’t it?)

 

 

 

Chikara spends almost half an hour outside Daichi’s door, pacing and scratching his head and working up his courage only for it to deflate again because _Chikara, you’re stupid and an asshole, you’re a stupid asshole_ —

“I could hear you fidgeting from my bathroom,” Daichi says, opening the door just as Chikara’s about to flee back to his room. He kindly ignores Chikara’s undignified yelp. “Is everything okay? Do you need something?”

“No.” _Wrong word, Chikara_. He swallows. “I mean, yes. I—uh—I blocked Yuu’s number on my phone. And I can’t remember it.”

Daichi smiles and beckons him inside.

 

 

 

* * *

 

(“Daichi-san! Has Chikara said anything? How is he doing? Is he—”)

(“Yuu,” Chikara breathes. He’s not going to cry, dammit, this isn’t a _sappy movie_. “Hi.”)

**Author's Note:**

> Alternate Title: That Fic Where Tanaka's Dead
> 
> Disclaimer: I’ve never actually seen _Adrift in Tokyo_ , it’s just a movie I remember a classmate mentioning at some point
> 
> EDIT: Now that creators have been revealed I can finally shove my [tumblr](http://www.chocoholicfangirl.tumblr.com) in here; thank you to everyone who has given me kudos and/or commented, all this feedback has been absolutely amazing!


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